MT/'pr.TilASANT 




PRESENTED BY 



P. L. 124 



i P O 9— 145« 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 



By RALPH WALDO TRINE. 



*• The Life Books:* 

I know of nothing in the entire range of 
literature more calculated to inspire the young 
than the "Life Books," and to renew the soul 
in young and old. — From a Reader, 



WHAT ALL THE WORLD'S A-SEEKING. 

IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE; or, Fulness of 
Peace, Power, and Plenty. 

The ''Life'' Booklets, 
THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 
EVERY LIVING CREATURE. 
CHARACTER-BUILDING THOUGHT POWER. 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL k CO., 

NEW YORK. 



Every Living Creature 

OR. HEART-TRAINING THROUGH THE 
ANIMAL WORLD 

By 
RALPH WALDO TRINE 



The tender and humane 
passion in the human 
heart is too precious a 
quality to -allow it to be 
hardened or effaced by 
practices such as we so 
often indulge in 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



2ffo PLEAS ANf 

H\i47// 

.18 



Copyright, 1899, 
By Ralph Waldo Trine 



VRAMBFEB 
9. G. PUBLIC : -BRA«ir 



:i 



»^ 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROPERTY; 
TRANSFERRED FROM PUBLiIO IiIBRARt 



"\ 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 



OR 



HEART-TRAINING THROUGH THE 
ANIMAL WORLD 

TT is said that in Japan if one picks up a 
stone to throw at a dog, the dog will 
not run, as you will find he will in almost 
every case here, because there the dog has 
never had a stone thrown at him, and con- 
sequently he does not know what it means. 
This spirit of gentleness, kindliness, and 
care for the animal world is a character- 
istic of the Japanese people. It in turn 
manifests itself in all of their relations 
with their fellow - men ; and one of the 
results is that the amount of crime com- 
mitted there each year in proportion to the 
population is but a very small fraction of 
that committed in the United States. 

In India, where the treatment of the 
animal world is something to put to shame 

A 



2 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

our own country, with its boasted Chris- 
tian civilisation and power, there, with a 
population of some three hundred millions, 
there is but one-fourth the amount of crime 
that there is each year in England, with 
a population of some twenty millions, and 
only a fraction of what it is in the United 
States, with a population of not more than 
one-fourth the population of India. These 
are most significant facts; they are indeed 
facts of tremendous import, and we would 
do wisely to estimate them at their proper 
value. 

We cannot begin too early in inculcating 
what I would term humane sentiments in 
the mind and heart of every individual 
How early and almost unconsciously the 
mother, for example, gives the first lessons 
of thoughtlessness, carelessness, and what 
will eventually result in cruelty or even crime, 
to her child. The child is put upon the 
hobby-horse, a whip is put into his little 
hand, and he is told: "Now whip the old 
horse and make him go." With this initial 
lesson, continued in various ways, we find 
the eager desire the child has for whipping, 
when he gets the whip into his hands in a 
waggon behind a real horse. Or even when 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 3 

younger, the child stumbles over a chair, 
receives a knock, and bursts into crying. 
The mother, in some cases merely thought- 
less, in others caring only for her own 
comfort and ease, in order to call the atten- 
tion of the child away from the little hurt 
and greater rage and fright, says : " Did the 
mean chair hurt mamma's little boy? Go 
and kick the old chair — kick it hard." The 
next day when the child falls over or bumps 
against the dog, the dog in turn is the one 
to receive the kick; and still later, when 
anything of the kind occurs in connection 
with a little playmate, the playmate re- 
ceives the same treatment. And, so far as 
his relations with his fellow-men, when he 
is grown to manhood, are concerned, each 
one can trace them for himself. 

We have sketched the thoughtless or the 
selfish mother. Let us look for a moment 
at the other type of mother, the one who 
is ever thoughtful, desirous of bringing the 
best influence to bear upon this little sensi- 
tive plate, if you will allow the expression, 
the mother who understands the great, almost 
omnipotent forming-power of early impres- 
sions. The child stumbles over or falls against 
the chair. The mother, after smoothing the 



4 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

hurt place and kissing away the first impulse 
to anger and also the fright of the child, 
and thereby its tears, says : " And now I 
wonder if mamma's little boy has hurt the 
chair. Go bring it to mamma and let her 
smooth away its hurt also." This is done, 
and all is now as if nothing had occurred. 
The next day, then, when the child stumbles 
over or bumps against the dog, after he has> 
had his own hurt soothed by his mother, 
he in turn toddles off to soothe and comfort 
the dog ; and again, when the child bumps 
against his little play-fellow, after he has 
been soothed and kissed and thereby com- 
forted by his mother, he feels for and 
sympathises with the other little fellow, and 
brings him up to receive the same treatment. 
And again, each one can for himself carry 
the effects of this type of suggestion and 
training into the child's later life and into 
his relations with his fellow-men. Many 
instances of this nature in the every-day 
life of the mother and child might be 
mentioned. 

And to go back even farther — those 
mothers who are beginning to understand 
the powerful moulding influences of pre- 
natal conditions will realise that every mental 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 5 

and emotional state lived in by the mother 
makes its influence felt in the life of the 
forming child, and she will therefore be 
careful that during the period she is carrying 
the child no thoughts or emotions of anger, 
or hatred, or envy, or malice, no unkind 
thoughts of any kind be entertained by her, 
but, on the contrary, thoughts of tenderness, 
kindness, compassion, and love; these then 
will influence and lead the mind of the 
child when born, and will in turn externalise 
their effects in his body, instead of allowing 
to be externalised the poisoning and de- 
structive effects of their opposites. 

Heart-Training 

It is an established fact that the training 
of the intellect alone is not sufficient. 
Nothing in this world can be truer than 
that the education of the head, without 
the training of the heart, simply increases 
one's power for evil, while the education 
of the heart, along with the head, increases 
one's power for good, and this, indeed, is 
the true education. 

Clearly we must begin with the child. 
The lessons learned in childhood are the 



6 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

last to be forgotten. The potter moulds 
the clay only when it is soft; in a little 
while, when it begins to harden, he has no 
more power over it. So it is with the child. 
The first principles of conduct instilled into 
his mind, planted within his heart, take root 
and grow, and as he grows from childhood 
to youth, and from youth to manhood, these 
principles become fixed. They exert their 
influence. Scarcely any power in existence 
can change them. They cling to him 
through life. They decide his destiny. 
How important, then, that these first prin- 
ciples implanted within the child's heart 
be lessons of gentleness, kindness, mercy, 
love, and humanity, and not lessons of 
hatred, envy, selfishness, and malice ! The 
former make ultimately our esteemed, law- 
abiding, law-loving citizens ; the latter law- 
breakers and criminals. Upon the training 
of the children of to-day depends the con- 
dition of our country a generation hence. 

In crimes against the person the passions 
play the most important part, and this is 
true, also, even in many crimes against 
property. How important it is, then, that 
the child be taught to govern its passions! 
How important that it be taught to be 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 7 

kind, gentle, loving, and humane; and in 
all the range of human thought there is 
not a better, wiser, or more expedient way 
of accomplishing this end than by teaching 
kindness towards God's lower creatures. If 
children are thus taught they will have 
instilled into their hearts those principles 
of action which will make them kind and 
merciful not only to the lower animals, but 
also toward their fellow-men as they attain 
to manhood. Let them be taught that 
the lower animals are God's creatures, as 
they themselves are, put here by a common 
Heavenly Father, each for its own special 
purpose, and that they have the same right to 
life and protection. Let them be taught that 
principle recognised by all noble - hearted 
men, that it is only a depraved, debased, 
and cowardly nature that will injure an in- 
ferior, defenceless creature, simply because 
it is in its power to do so, and that there 
is no better, no grander test of true bravery 
and nobility of character than one's treat- 
ment of the lower animals. 

It is impossible to over-estimate the benefits 
resulting from judicious, humane instruction. 
The child who has been taught nothing of 
mercy, nothing of humanity, who has never 



8 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

been brought to realise the claims that 
animals have upon him for protection and 
kindness, will grow up to be thoughtless and 
cruel toward them, and if he is cruel to them 
that same heart, untouched by kindness and 
mercy, will prompt him to be cruel to his 
family, to his fellow - men. On the other 
hand, the child who has been taught to 
realise the claims that God's lower creatures 
have upon him, whose heart has been touched 
by lessons of kindness and mercy, under their 
sweet influence will grow to be a large- 
hearted, tender-hearted, manly man. Then 
let the children be trained, their hands, their 
intellects, and above all their hearts. Let 
them be taught to have pity for the animals 
that are at our mercy, that cannot protect 
themselves, that cannot explain their weak- 
ness, their pain, or their suffering, and soon 
this will bring to their recognition that higher 
law, the moral obligation of man as a superior 
being to protect and care for the weak and 
defenceless. Nor will it stop here, for this 
in turn will lead them to that highest law — 
man's duty to man. 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 9 

Hunting 

So great do I believe are the influences 
of the inculcation of humane sentiments 
early in the life of every individual that 
I shall endeavour to make as concrete 
as possible the suggestions which are to 
follow; for criminal training or humane 
training can be and is continually given 
in numbers of ways. 

As a parent, in the first place, I would 
teach the child the thoughtlessness, the 
selfishness, the heartlessness, the cruelty 
of hunting for sport. I would put into 
his hands no air-guns or instruments or 
weapons by which he could inflict torture 
upon or take the life of birds or other 
animals. Instead of encouraging him in 
torturing or killing the birds, I would point 
out to him the great service they are con- 
tinually doing for us in the destruction 
of various worms and insects and small 
rodents which, if left to themselves, would 
so multiply as literally to destroy practic- 
ally all fruit and plant life. I would have 
him remember how many lives are enriched 
and beautified by their song. I would point 
out to him their habits of industry, their 



lo EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

marvellous powers of adaptation, their in- 
sight and perseverance. Therefore I would 
teach him to love, to study, to care for 
and feed them. 

Hunting for sport indicates one of two 
things — a nature of such thoughtlessness 
as to be almost inexcusable, or a selfishness 
so deplorable as to be unworthy a normal, 
sane human being. No truly thoughtful 
manly man or truly thoughtful womanly 
woman will engage in it. And when we 
read of this or that woman, be she well 
known in society, or the wife of this or 
that well-known man, so following her 
selfish, savage, cruel instincts, or her de- 
sire for notoriety or newspaper comments, 
as to take part in a deer-hunt, a fox-chase, 
or in a hunt of any type, we have an index 
to her real character that should be suffi- 
cient. 

But a few days ago my attention was 
called to a minister in one of the New 
England cities, who had come out in the 
papers with an article on hunting as a most 
excellent pastime and recreation for the 
members of his calling, and urged them 
to take it up, as he already had. Think 
of it, what it means, — a man who has 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE ii 

gotten no farther into the real spirit of 
the gentle and compassionate teachings of 
the Christ whom he professes to follow, 
to say nothing of the humane teachings of 
the gentle Buddha, whom this reverend 
gentleman would, by the way, refer to in 
his pulpit and his prayer-meetings as the 
heathen ! Shall we refrain from saying, 
inexcusable thoughtlessness, or brutal, de- 
plorable selfishness? I cannot refrain in 
this connection from quoting a sentence 
or two from Archdeacon Farrar which have 
recently come to my notice : 

"Not once or twice only, at the seaside, 
have I come across a sad and disgraceful 
sight — a sight which haunts me still — a 
number of harmless sea-birds lying defaced 
and dead upon the sand, their white 
plumage red with blood, as they had been 
tossed there, dead or half - dead, their 
torture and massacre having furnished a 
day's amusement to heartless and sense- 
less men. Amusement ! I say execrable 
amusement! All killing for mere killing's 
sake is execrable amusement. Can you 
imagine the stupid callousness, the utter 
insensibility to mercy and beauty, of the 
man who, seeing those bright, beautiful 



12 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

creatures as their white, immaculate wings 
flash in the sunshine over the blue waves, 
can go out in a boat with his boys 
to teach them to become brutes in char- 
acter by finding amusement — I say, again, 
dis-humanising amusement — by wantonly 
murdering these fair birds of God, or 
cruelly wounding them, and letting them 
fly away to wait and die in lonely 
places ? " 

And another paragraph which was sent 
me by a kind friend to our fellow-creatures 
a few days ago : 

"The celebrated Russian novelist, Tur- 
genieff, tells a most touching incident from 
his own life, which awakened in him 
sentiments that have coloured all his 
writings with a deep and tender feeling. 

" When Turgenieff was a boy of ten 
his father took him out one day bird- 
shooting. As they tramped across the 
brown stubble, a golden pheasant rose 
with a low whirr from the ground at his 
feet, and, with the joy of a sportsman 
throbbing through his veins, he raised his 
gun and fired, wild with excitement when 
the creature fell fluttering at his side. 
Life was ebbing fast, but the instinct of 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 13 

the mother was stronger than death itself, 
and with a feeble flutter of her wings the 
mother bird reached the nest where her 
young brood were huddled, unconscious 
of danger. Then, with such a look of 
pleading and reproach that his heart 
stood still at the ruin he had wrought, — 
and never to his dying day did he forget 
the feeling of cruelty and guilt that came 
to him in that moment,— the little brown 
head toppled over, and only the dead 
body of the mother shielded her nestlings. 

"* Father, father,' he cried, 'what have 
I done?' as he turned his horror-stricken 
face to his father. But not to his father's 
eye had this little tragedy been enacted, 
and he said: 'Well done, my son; that 
was well done for your first shot. You 
will soon be a fine sportsman.' 

"'Never, father; never again shall I 
destroy any living creature. If that is 
sport I will have none of it. Life is more 
beautiful to me than death, and since I 
cannot give life, I will not take it.'" 

And so, instead of putting into the hands 
of the child a gun or any other weapon 
that may be instrumental in crippling, 
torturing, or taking the life of even a 



14 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

single animal, I would give him the field- 
glass and the camera, and send him out 
to be a friend to the animals, to observe 
and study their characteristics, their habits, 
to learn from them those wonderful lessons 
that can be learned, and thus have his 
whole nature expand in admiration and 
love and care for them, and become 
thereby the truly manly and princely type 
of man, rather than the careless^ callous, 
brutal type. 

Vivisection 

Another practice let us consider that is 
clearly hardening in its influence — a prac- 
tice that children and older students are 
here and there called upon to witness. I 
refer to the practice commonly known as 
vivisection — the cutting, freezing, burning, 
tearing, torturing of live animals for pur- 
poses of scientific "investigation." After 
making a most careful study of this matter 
and its claims, getting the opinions of 
many of the ablest physicians and surgeons 
in the world, I have been forced to come 
to the conclusion that practically nothing of 
any real value has come to us through this 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 15 

channel that could not and would not 
have come in other ways without this 
great torture and sacrifice of life, to say 
nothing of the cruel and hardening effects 
upon those who resort to these methods. 

Personally, I should allow no child of 
mine to attend or remain at any school 
where it is carried on, and, moreover, I 
should raise my voice and exert my in- 
fluence against it at every opportunity. I 
should teach the child the great fact that 
we are so rapidly learning to-day — namely, 
that the mind is the natural protector of 
the body, and that there are being con- 
tinually externalised in the body, effects 
and conditions most akin to our prevailing 
mental states and emotions. I should 
teach him that it is unwise as well as 
cowardly to bring diseased conditions into 
the body through the poisoning, corroding 
effects of anger, hatred, jealousy, malice, 
envy, rage, fear, worry, lust, intemperance, 
and then seek to find an aid to the r^emedy 
through the torture of even a single dumb 
fellow-creature. 



i6 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

Docking 

In the next place, as an object-lesson, 
I should point out to the child what is 
indicated at the sight of a dock-tailed horse. 
It indicates one of two things — weakness 
of individuality and hence slavery to 
custom, or that all too - prevalent vain 
desire through parade to attract attention, 
because the owner of the animal is con- 
scious of the fact that there is not enough 
in himself to attract it, and also because he 
is utterly devoid of those finer sensibilities 
of the heart through whose promptings one 
is restrained from all acts of cruelty and 
torture, from all acts that will give pain 
to any living creature. I would point out 
to the child the torture that is inflicted upon 
the animal during the process of the sawing 
and the burning of the tail, and also that 
this acute pain and torture is but little 
compared with the after-torture that is to 
follow during the balance of the horse's 
life. 

The skin of the horse is exceedingly 
sensitive to the bites and the stings of the 
flies and other pestiferous insects that 
harass him during the heated term of the 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 17 

year, and which without this natural weapon 
of defence make his life almost unendur- 
able. I would point out to the child how 
cruelly the animal is maimed for life, and 
how foolhardily its beauty is forever de- 
stroyed. 

The practice has already by statute been 
made a crime in a number of States, 
punishable by both fine and imprisonment, 
but still the idiotic, cruel, and deplorable 
practice goes on to a greater or less ex- 
tent; and not until public sentiment is 
thoroughly aroused against it will it 
entirely cease. If the one who has it 
done were compelled to stand for but 
half a day in the hot summer weather, 
with his back bare to the bites and the 
stings of the flies and sweat-bees and other 
insects that would drive him almost frantic, 
if his hands were so fastened that he could 
not drive them away, then he might be 
brought partially at least to his senses. 

And when the fine sensitive horse whose 
tail had been sawn off in this way, so that 
he was one day driven almost to madness by 
the stings and bites he was powerless to pro- 
tect himself from, especially as he was farther 
maddened by that fiendish device of torture, 

B 



1 8 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

the high check-rein, finally became unman- 
ageable and dashed down the road a run- 
away, hurling his owner to death and his wife 
to the bed of an invalid and cripple — it may 
seem unkind to say it — but it certainly served 
them right. They reaped only what they 
themselves had sown, as every one must in 
some form or another, for such is the law of 
the universe. 



Cattle Transport 

And again, as an object-lesson, I would 
point out to the child the men who each year 
engage in cattle-starving on our Western 
plains ; for on the various ranches thousands 
of head of cattle in cold winters starve and 
freeze to death, because left to themselves 
when they can no longer find sufficient food 
on the ranch, this plan being adopted by 
many cattle-raisers because it is cheaper for 
them to lose a certain portion of the herd 
each winter than it is to furnish them suit- 
able food and shelter. Thousands of cattle 
have so perished during the past winter. I 
would show that such a man is a criminal 
and deserves restraint as such, no less than 
a man who would cause a part of his stock 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 19 

to starve to death in a stable or on a 
farm. 

I would teach the child the same in regard 
to those responsible for the careless, cruel, 
mercenary methods of transporting cattle, 
sheep, and horses from the West to the East, 
or to England and other countries, in the 
cattle ships, where sometimes as many as a 
quarter or even a third of the animals are 
found dead on their arrival, and numbers of 
others so mangled and crippled that they have 
to be killed as soon as they are taken from 
the vessel. 



Dress and Fashion 

There is another excellent opportunity for 
humane teaching, and one that comes especi- 
ally near to every woman. It lies in the 
thoughtless, cruel, and inexcusable practice 
of wearing the skins and plumage of birds for 
millinery and other decorative purposes. The 
enormous proportions of this traffic are simply 
appalling. In the course of a single day last 
year in London, and from a single auction 
store, the skins of six hundred thousand 
birds were sold. This number represented 



20 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

the sales of but one store of one city on a 
single day. 

Millions of birds are destroyed annually to 
supply the demands that fashion venders, who 
become wealthy thereby, have created in the 
minds of women for this purpose. Whole 
species of birds have already become prac- 
tically extinct by this wholesale slaughter, 
while others are rapidly becoming so. For 
example, that beautiful bird the white heron, 
commonly known as the egret, — in Florida 
but one can now be seen here and there by 
the tourist where thousands could be seen 
but a few years ago. This bird is killed and 
its plumage taken only at that season of the 
year when its dress becomes a little more 
brilliant than usual, for it is its nesting time, 
and Nature seems to be recognising this, the 
marriage season, by preparing for it its wed- 
ding garments. 

The birds at this season are apparently 
very innocent of harm and very tame, and 
are found near together taking care of their 
young. At times hundreds of birds are to 
be found near together in one roost among 
the tall trees of the swamp-lands, so that the 
bird-catcher finds it an easy task to conceal 
himself and pick them off as they are return- 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 21 

ing to their nests with food for their young, 
— sometimes to the extent of several hundred 
in a single day ; and every bird killed at this 
season means the starving to death, on the 
average, of four or five of its young. It be- 
hoves every woman, then, who wears even a 
single egret plume, to remember that she has 
been the cause of the sacrifice of at least four 
or five birds. 

"But," says the gentle lady, "I had no- 
thing to do with the killing of the birds." 
True ; had you to do with it personally you 
would not wear what you now wear. But 
were it not for multitudes of ladies like your- 
self. Bill Jones, bird-catcher, would turn his 
mind and energies to other avenues, for he 
would no longer have a demand, and hence 
a market, each year to supply. 

I know of one bird-catcher who, with his 
assistants, in a single season slaughtered and 
took the skins of over one hundred and 
thirty thousand birds. Think what this 
means when we take into consideration 
the few days of the very short season devoted 
to this ! 

And what does this indicate in women? 
I would not be unfair, and so I will say that 
to me it indicates chiefly thoughtlessness and 



22 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

lack of imagination on her part. If the one 
who now decorates herself with the plumage 
*of her slaughtered fellow-creatures could be 
on the spot with Bill Jones and see the crim- 
son life-blood that the bleeding heart is puls- 
ing out, staining even the feathers that she 
herself will wear — if she could see the agonies 
of the death struggle, and then see the gap- 
ing mouths of the starving young ones in the 
nest, waiting in vain for the return of the 
parent bird with food — then, I am sure, she 
would no longer be a victim to this foolish, 
thoughtless, heartless habit. No ; I have too 
much respect for and faith in the finer sensi- 
bilities of woman to believe that she would. 
Once in a while, it is true, we will find a 
woman so wrapped up in her vain, selfish, 
insane desire for show that, notwithstanding 
the realisation on her part of all we have 
just said, she would nevertheless demand 
this sacrifice to minister to her vanity. 

Were I a woman I certainly should want 
to be among the forerunners in the move- 
ment that has already begun along this line. 
I would rather be a leader in setting a good 
fashion than a follower of a poor and posi- 
tively bad one. 

And you will be surprised what beautiful 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 23 

hats and bonnets can be devised by the 
woman of a little ingenuity, without the aid 
of birds' plumage or, feathers of any kind. 
And when skilful minds and hands are once 
turned in this direction we shall wonder that 
this relic-of-barbarism mode of adornment, 
even though it be a somewhat modified form 
of it, has lasted so long. 

As a mother I would keep or lead my 
daughter out of this heartless and need- 
less practice by first abandoning it myself. 
Children are so quick to see inconsistencies. 
Said a little fellow to his mates the other 
day: "I know why teacher don't want us 
to rob the birds' nests and kill the litde 
birds. She wants 'em to grow up so she 
can wear 'em on her bonnet." And when 
one sees, as I have seen, a teacher with 
the skins of two and the feathers of more 
birds on her hat, we will realise that, after 
all, teaching by example is better than by 
precept, or, putting it in another form, 
teaching by precept without its being re- 
inforced by example is of but little value. 

But for the people's sakes, as well as, if 
not even more than for the bird's, I would 
urge attention to and action along this 
line. The tender and humane passion in 



24 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

the human heart is too precious a quality 
to allow it to be hardened or effaced by 
practices such as we so often indulge in. 
Even from an economic standpoint, the 
service that birds render us every year, so 
far as vegetation is concerned, is literally 
beyond computation. Were they all killed 
off, the world would soon become practic- 
ally uninhabitable for man, because vegeta- 
tion each year would be so thoroughly 
blighted or even consumed by the hordes 
of insects that would infest it. It is but 
necessary to realise how rapidly, even during 
the past several years, insect life has been 
increasing in some quarters, so as to tax 
to the utmost the skill of the farmer, the 
gardener, and the fruit-grower. Instead, 
then, of schooling the child to be the de- 
stroyer of bird life, let it be guided along 
the lines of being its lover and its protector. 
And if those who use them, women especi- 
ally, could know and fully realise the cruel 
and at times almost unspeakable cruelty 
and torture that attends the procuring of 
their sealskin and other fur or fur-trimmed 
or lined garments, I am sure that many at 
least would begin quietly to look about for 
garments made of other materials ; — if they 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 25 

could know of the seals being clubbed to 
death in their innocent tameness on their 
native ice rocks, of the other fur-bearing 
animals that are trapped, remaining for 
hours, or even at times for days, with leg 
or legs crushed between the trap's cruel 
and relentless steel jaws, before the merci- 
ful blow comes that is to end their torture, 
when it has not already died from its torture 
or from starvation, or has not gnawed its 
leg from the trap with its own teeth in 
order to escape — if they could be brought 
fully to realise these facts, then I am sure 
they would conclude that these articles are 
bought with a price greater than any human 
being can afford to pay. 

Flesh as Food 

A word now in regard to another matter 
that is of far more importance than is 
generally supposed — the matter of the ex- 
cessive flesh-eating that is continually going 
on in our country. After looking carefully 
into the matter, and after some years' ex- 
perience in its non-use, I can state without 
hesitancy that, contrary to the prevailing 
opinion, the flesh of animals is not neces- 



26 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

sary as an article of food. But few are 
better off for its use, while the great 
majority are the worse off for it, and especi- 
ally is this true when it is so excessively 
used as we find it now on every hand. 

We shall find numerous articles of food, 
as we study the matter, that, so far as 
body nourishing, building, and sustaining 
qualities are concerned, contain twice, and 
in some cases over twice, as much as any 
flesh food that can be mentioned. The 
liability to mistake in this matter lies in 
the fact that flesh foods when taken into 
the stomach burn, oxygenise, more quickly 
than most other foods do, and this short 
stimulating effect, resembling more or less 
the stimulating effects of alcohol, is mis- 
taken for a body nourishing and sustaining 
effect. 

Flesh foods stimulate the passions, and 
more, acting as a stimulant in the body, 
they call for other stimulants to feed and 
satisfy the appetites thus aroused ; and some 
of the world's most eminent physicians, who 
have looked carefully into the matter, are 
declaring that the excessive amount of 
whisky and beer drinking, with its attend- 
ant drunkenness and crime, will never be 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 27 

done away with, or materially lessened, so 
long as this excessive eating of flesh con- 
tinues. 

Numerous other things, such as the irrit- 
ability it causes in the natures of large 
numbers of people who use it, the almost 
unconscious blunting of many of the finer 
senses, as also the dangers attending its use, 
on account of the diseased or poisoned con- 
dition of meats in many cases, are worthy 
of a very serious consideration. If space 
permitted, many facts regarding the exceed- 
ingly large number of diseased animals that 
are eventually sold in the form of meat, 
facts as reported by various boards of in- 
quiry, various commissions, etc., might be 
cited; and who can tell when such may 
not be the condition of that of which he 
himself is partaking? And when we re- 
member the vast numbers of animals — cattle 
especially — that are angered almost to de- 
speration, in some cases literally maddened 
by anger, and when we remember the 
peculiar poison that reaches every part of 
the body when the mind is thus angered, 
and that in this state large numbers of 
animals are killed, we can readily see how 
important this aspect of the matter is. 



28 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

" But is not flesh-eating natural ? " I hear 
it asked. " Does not man in his primitive, 
savage state make use of flesh naturally'^ 
Do not animals devour one another? " Yes; 
but we are not savages, nor are we purely 
animals, and it is time for us to have out- 
grown this attendant-of-savage-life custom. 
The truth of the matter is that considerably 
more than the one-half of the people in 
the world to-day are not flesh-eaters. And 
many peoples, whom large numbers in 
America and in England, for example, refer 
to as the heathen, and send missionaries to 
Christianise, are far ahead of us, and hence 
more Christian in this matter. And one 
reason why missionaries in many parts of 
India, among the Buddhists and Brahmins, 
for example, have been so comparatively 
unsuccessful in their work is because the 
majority of those keen-minded and spiritu- 
ally unfolded people cannot see what 
superiority there is in the religion of the 
one whom it allows to kill, cook, and feast 
upon the bodies of his or her fellow-crea- 
tures, which they themselves could not do. 

In Bombay, to have the carcasses of 
animals exposed to public view, as we see 
them in the stores and markets here, and 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 29 

at times scores of them decorating their 
windows and entire fronts, is prohibited by 
law. 

No, experience will teach you that if 
you do away with flesh-eating and get in 
its place the other valuable foods, the time 
will quickly come when you will care less 
and less for it; then again, the time will 
come when you will have no desire for it, 
and finally, you will grow positively to 
dislike it and its effects, and nothing could 
induce you to return again to the flesh- 
pots. And as for those who think that 
the ones who are not flesh - eaters are 
necessarily weaklings, I should like to 
match a friend of mine, an instructor in 
one of our great American universities, 
who for over eighteen years has eaten 
no flesh foods, — I should like to match 
him with any whom they may send for- 
ward, when it comes to a test of long- 
continued work and endurance. 

In London there are already numbers 
of restaurants where no flesh foods are 
served; in Berlin there are already about 
twenty, and their number in these, as 
well as in numerous other cities, is con- 
tinually increasing. It is a matter of but 



30 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

a short time when there will be numbers 
of such in our own country. The only 
really consistent humanitarian is the one 
who is not a flesh-eater; and great, I am 
satisfied, will be the results, both to the 
human family and to the animal race, as 
children are wisely taught and judiciously 
directed along this line. 

When one goes into the better restaurants 
where no flesh foods are served, in England 
and Germany for example, he is impressed 
with the foundationless excuse of so many 
people, that it is hard, or even impossible, 
to get along without flesh foods. In the 
other realms will be found an abundance, 
a hundred or a thousand times over, and 
especially when we begin to give some 
little attention to the great varieties of 
most valuable foods there, and to the 
exceedingly appetising ways in which they 
can be prepared. One reason why such 
large numbers of people feel that meat is 
a necessity, or almost a necessity with them 
as an article of food, is because in our 
hotels and restaurants and cafes, and, in 
fact, in the majority of our homes, the 
meat element forms the chief portion of 
the foods prepared for our tables, and to it, 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 31 

practically, all the skill in preparation is 
given; while the other things are looked 
upon more as accessories, and are many 
times prepared in an exceedingly careless 
manner, much as mere accessories would be. 
But with a decreasing use of flesh foods 
and with more attention given to the 
skilful preparation of the large numbers of 
other still more valuable foods, we shall 
begin to wonder why we have so long been 
slaves to a mere custom, thinking it a 
necessity. 

An eminent Hindu has presented some 
truths along the lines of non-flesh eating 
so ably, that I yield to the impulse to 
quote from him quite at length : 

"Animal flesh enriches the blood with un- 
necessary fibrin^ and this produces unnatural 
heat in the system, and in turn is the cause of 
unusual activity and restlessness, ultimately lead- 
ing to the nervous debility which afflicts many 
meat eaters. Constant use of meat increases 
the action of the heart and brings premature 
loss of vital forces. Physiologists and compara- 
tive anatomists like Sir Everard Home have 
shown from the structure of the teeth, stomach, 
alimentary canal, the microscopic human blood- 
corpuscles and the digestive processes, that man 



32 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

is by nature more related to frugivorous animals 
than to the carnivora. 

"From the chemical analysis of different 
vegetables, cereals, fruits, nuts, etc., and the 
flesh of different animals, and from the com- 
parison of the constituent properties of veget- 
ables with those of animal flesh, it can be shown 
that everything necessary for the growth of the 
muscles, for the strength of the nerves, and for 
the nourishment of the whole body can easily 
be obtained from the vegetable kingdom. This 
being the fact, the question arises. Why do we 
eat animal flesh ? Is it for nourishment ? No. 
The same nourishment can be obtained from 
vegetables, cereals, and pulses. Is it for health 
that we eat meat ? No ; because vegetarians, 
as a class, are healthier than the majority of 
meat-eaters. Why, then, is meat eaten? Be- 
cause of the habit transmitted from generation 
to generation, and because of superstition, pre- 
judice and ignorance. 

" Various objections have been raised by meat 
eaters against vegetarianism. Some say if ani- 
mals are not used for food they will overrun the 
earth. In India the Hindus do not kill cows, 
but they are not overrun by them. The Hindus 
did not have any slaughter-houses until the 
British Government established them. In the 
States that are still governed by the Hindu 
Rijas the wild animals and birds are protected 
by strict laws. But these States are not over- 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 33 

run by wild animals, nor are the inhabitants 
driven out by them. Others hold that unless 
they eat animal flesh they will be weak and 
useless for work and will lack bravery and 
courage. This is a great mistake. You have 
heard of the Hindu Sikh soldiers in India, who 
are the bravest and strongest fighters in the 
British army. They never turn their back to 
an enemy in the battlefield. One Sikh soldier 
can stand against three beef-eaters in hand-to- 
hand fight. But these soldiers never touch 
meat, nor fish, never drink wine, nor smoke 
tobacco. They are strict vegetarians. A vege- 
tarian diet gives great endurance and makes 
one even-tempered. People generally mistake a 
ferocious, restless, and rash temper for courage 
and strength. These say that a tiger or a wolf 
is stronger than a horse, a buffalo or an elephant. 
They make ferocious nature the standard of 
strength. It is true that a tiger can kill a 
horse, but has he the muscular strength which 
enables a horse to draw a heavy load a long 
distance ? A tiger can kill an elephant, but can 
he lift a cannon weighing hundreds of pounds ? 
Ferocity is one thing and muscular strength is 
another: we ought to distinguish the one from 
the other. The source of strength lies in the 
vegetable kingdom and not in flesh and blood. 
If flesh eating be the condition of physical 
strength, why do meat-eaters prefer the flesh of 
herbivorous animals and not that of the car- 



34 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

nivora? Some meat-eaters say that animal 
jflesh has a large quantity of vegetable energy 
concentrated in a small compass. If that be 
their reason for the meat - eating habit, they 
ought to live on the flesh of carnivorous animals 
and birds, such as tigers, wolves, vultures, and 
hawks. 

"As in the animal kingdom the carnivora are 
more restless than the herbivora, so amongst 
men we find that meat-eaters are more restless 
and less self-controlled than vegetarians. As a 
peaceful, poised and self-controlled nature is the 
first sign of spiritual progress, it is plain that 
animal food is not the most helpful diet for 
spiritual development." 

The time will come in the world's history, 
and a movement is setting in that direction 
even now, when it will be deemed as strange 
a thing to find a man or a woman who eats 
flesh as food, as it is now to find a man or 
a woman who refrains from eating it. And 
personally, I share the belief with many 
others, that the highest mental, physical, and 
spiritual excellence will come to a person 
only when, among other things, he refrains 
from a flesh and blood diet. 

Personally, I shall be glad, as long as 
forces and agencies are at work that tend 
to keep armies in the field, if we awaken, 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 35 

and that almost instantly, to the dangers 
attending the health of troops in service 
from the large amount of " canned meats " 
that are used in connection with army 
rations. I believe, and I think I should 
be fully borne out by the facts if they 
could be thoroughly known, that thousands 
of deaths due to disease have been to a 
great extent induced or helped on through 
this agency. The evidence brought out in 
the investigations along this line, in connec- 
tion with the American forces which served 
but recently in the Spanish-American war 
— the conclusions of which were presented 
to the people as skilfully as possible, and 
were then allowed to drop as quickly as 
possible — should have no small weight with 
us as a people. If it were to receive the 
attention it really demands, many thousands 
of lives might be saved in the future that 
otherwise may be needlessly sacrificed. 

Were such a food necessary, it would 
then be a different matter ; but when there 
are other foods, even more valuable so far 
as body-building and nourishing and sus- 
taining qualities are concerned, and more 
free from the poisoned and loathsome con- 
ditions that so much of the canned meats 



36 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

get into, especially in hot climates — foods 
that can be transported just as readily; in 
fact, prepared in a similar way and ready 
for immediate use — then we can readily see 
the criminal folly in allowing a continuance 
of its use, at least in such quantities as 
it is at present used. 

And there is another matter of grave 
importance that we should not be allowed 
to lose sight of in this connection. The 
brutality to the animal creation, which as a 
weaker creation we should protect and care 
for, has its corresponding and balancing 
element in connection with our duty to 
those who are hired to do our butchery for 
us. And here let me quote a paragraph 
from Mr Henry Salt, the well-known 
English humanitarian thinker and worker : 

" But this question of butchery is not merely 
one of kindness or unkindness to animals, for 
by the very facts of the case it is a human 
question of no slight importance, affecting as it 
does the social and moral welfare of those more 
immediately concerned in it. Of all recognised 
occupations by which, in civilised countries, a 
livelihood is sought and obtained, the work 
which is looked upon with the greatest loathing 
(next to the hangman's) is that of the butcher, 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 37 

as witness the opprobrious sense which the 
word 'butcher' has acquired. Owing to the 
instinctive horror of bloodshed which is char- 
acteristic of all normal civilised beings, the 
trade of doing to death countless numbers of 
inoffensive and highly organised creatures, 
amid scenes of indescribable filth and ferocity, 
is delegated to a pariah class of 'slaughter- 
men,' who are thus themselves made the victims 
of a grievous social wrong. ' I 'm only doing 
your dirty work ; it 's such as you makes such 
as us^ is said to have been the remark of a 
Whitechapel butcher to a flesh-eating gentle- 
man who remonstrated with him for his brut- 
ality ; and the remark was a perfectly just one. 
To demand a product which can only be 
procured at the cost of the intense suffering of 
the animal, and the deep degradation of the 
butcher, and by a process which not one flesh- 
eater in a hundred would himself, under any 
circumstances, perform, or even witness, is 
conduct as callous, selfish, and unsocial as could 
well be imagined. . . . To have accustomed 
one's self to a total disregard for the pleading 
terror of sensitive animals, and to a murderous 
use of the knife is a terrible power for society 
to put into the hands of its lowest and least 
responsible members. The blame must ulti- 
mately fall on society itself, and not on the 
individual slaughterman." 

Chicago has gained, temporarily, at least, 



38 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

the reput^i)n of being tte gi^J: ^kughter- 
city of the world. Some of Chicago's first 
officials in the police department have 
given us many facts showing the direct 
connection between the influence of this 
trade, or rather this ** business/* and some 
of the most shocking crimes that the city 
has known of late years, for large numbers 
of these have been perpetrated by men 
engaged in this business, who have been 
gradually reaping the deteriorating effects 
of its influence. 

" No one who goes to Chicago," says a writer 
in the JVeTi/ Age^ " should fail to see the 
shambles. They are the most wicked things 
in creation ; they are sickening beyond descrip- 
tion. The men in them are more brutes than 
the animals they slaughter. Missions and 
institutes have been built in respectable parts 
of the cities from the profits, and the employees 
themselves have been left to go straight down 
to the devil. . . . It is the duty of everyone 
interested in social questions, of everyone 
whose demands necessitate this kind of labour, 
to wade through this filth to see those poor 
wretches at work." 

One who visited one of the Kansas city 
packing-houses, where many thousands of 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 39 

animals are killed daily, and where some 
thousands of men and boys are employed, 
writes as follows :— 

" Inside the vast slaughter-house it looked 
like a battle-field — the floors were crimson ; the 
men were deep-dyed from head to foot. It was 
a sickening spectacle. There the cattle were 
driven into pens, scores at a time, and the echo 
of the pole-axes was heard like the riveting of 
plates in a ship-building yard. Then the gate 
fronts were raised, and the kicking animals 
were shot on to the floor, to be seized by the 
hoofs by chains, and hoisted to the ceiling, and 
sent flying on their way to rows of men, who 
waited with knives, and skinned and quartered 
and washed them." 

In the light of the foregoing facts, and 
in the light of many more that might be 
presented, we can readily see that each one 
who aids in creating the demand for flesh 
foods is to a greater or less extent, not 
indirectly but directly, responsible for the 
degrading and dehumanising influences at 
work in the lives of many thousands of 
their fellow-men. We are our brother's 
keeper whenever it comes to a matter that 
we are personally involved in, and there 
are responsibilities that we cannot shift 



40 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

after we are once made acquainted with 
the facts pertaining to them. 

May I present here a few additional 
thoughts along this line, given utterance to 
by that very clear-thinking woman, Annie 
Besant : 

"We may adopt a bloodless diet to purify 
the body, or in order that we may have a 
body that will be less an obstacle to intel- 
lectual and moral growth ; and such reasons 
as these justify the practice, and no man or 
woman need be ashamed to confess them. 
But still deeper and more attractive than such 
an object is our principle^ our recognition of 
the unity of life in all that is around us, and 
that we are but parts of that one universal life. 
When we recognise that unity of all living 
things, then at once arises the question — How 
can we support this life of ours with least 
injury to the lives around us ? How can we 
prevent our own life adding to the suffering of 
the world in which we live ? . . . And at once 
we begin to see that, in our relations to the 
animal kingdom, a duty arises which all 
thoughtful and compassionate minds should 
recognise — the duty that, because we are 
stronger in mind than the animals, we are, or 
ought to be, their guardians and helpers^ not 
their tyrants and oppressors^ and we have no 
right to cause them suffering and terror merely 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 41 

for the gratification of the palate, merely for 
an added luxury to our own lives. 

"... Thus looking upon the animal king- 
dom, a sense of duty awakens within us ; we 
feel that they are not intended simply to be 
slaves of men's whims, to be victims of his 
fancies and desires ; they are living creatures^ 
showing forth a Divine life, in lesser measure 
than ourselves, it may be, but it is the same 
Divine life that is the heart of their heart, and 
the soul of their soul. 

" The animal evolves under the fostering in- 
telligence of man. The horse, the bullock, the 
dog, the elephant, any of the creatures that 
are around us in different lands, all develop 
a growing intelligence as they come into 
healthful relations with their elder brethren, 
men and women. We find that they answer 
with love to our love, and also with growing 
intelligence ; and we begin to realise that it is 
our duty to train and help that growth by 
making them co-workers with ourselves, to 
develop their intelligence by human com- 
panionship ; and not to slaughter them and 
thus make a gulf of blood between them and 
mankind. 

" Surely man should not go through nature 
leaving behind him a track of destruction, of 
misery, of hideous injury. 

"... So that one standpoint we may take 
up as Food Reformers is the standpoint of 



'42 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

Love, of recognition of our true place in the 
world. Not only that we may have cleaner 
materials in our bodies, not only that we may 
have a better instrument for our minds and 
souls to work with, but that we may be better 
channels of Divine Love to the world on every 
side. For this reason, fundamentally, I am a 
vegetarian, and I would not take for myself, 
needlessly, the life of any sentient creature 
that lives around me. 

"... But no one can eat the flesh of a 
slaughtered animal without having used the 
hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose 
that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures 
whose bodies we would fain have upon our 
table, is there one woman in a hundred who 
would go to the slaughter-house to slay the 
bullock, the calf, the sheep, or the pig ? Nay, 
is there one in a hundred who would not 
shrink from going to see it done, who would 
not be horrified to stand ankle deep in blood, 
and see the carcasses lying there just after the 
animals were slain ? But if we could not do 
it, nor see it done ; if we are so refined 
that we cannot allow close contact between 
ourselves and the butchers who furnish this 
food ; if we feel that they are so coarsened by 
their trade that their very bodies are made 
repulsive by the constant contact of the blood 
with which they must be continually be- 
smirched ; if we recognise the physical coarse- 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 43 

ness which results inevitably from such contact, 
dare we call ourselves refined if we purchase 
our refinement by the brutalisation of others^ 
and demand that some should be brutal in 
order that we may eat the results of their 
brutality ? We are not free from the brutal- 
ising results of that trade simply because we 
take no direct part in it, 

" . . , And everyone who eats flesh meat 
has part in that brutalisation ; everyone who 
uses what they provide is guilty of this 
degradation of his fellow-men. 

"... I ask you to recognise your duty as men 
and women, who should raise the Race, not 
degrade it ; who should try to make it divine, 
not brutal ; who should try to make it pure, 
not foul ; and therefore, in the name of Human 
Brotherhood, I appeal to you to leave your own 
tables free from the stain of blood, and your 
consciences free from the degradation of your 
fellow-men." 

If the one who uses pate de foie gras, 
ortolan, and other abnormally formed things 
of this type, will look a little into the 
methods by which they are obtained, with 
all their agonising and slowly dying torture 
attendants, I dare say he will then use 
them no longer ; he will not, indeed, if 
there is in him a nature that can truly be 
described by the word human in distinc- 



44 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

tion from that of brutal. It is our thoughts 
and our acts, or our complicity in the acts 
of others, that determine whether at any 
given time we are nearest akin to the brute 
or the human. 

It happened not long ago, in looking over 
the advertising pages of one of our great 
monthly magazines, that my attention was 
called to a whole-page advertisement of one 
of Chicago's packing-houses. In connection 
w^ith this advertisement numbers of figures 
were given, among which were the follow- 
ing :— 

"Six packing-houses, sixty-five acres of 
buildings. Handled last year, 1,437,844 
cattle, 2,658,951 sheep, 3,928,659 hogs. 
1^)433 employees." 

Here, then, is a total of a little over 
8,000,000 animals slaughtered in a single 
year by one concern, and when we take into 
consideration the number of other concerns 
of similar magnitude, and also the thousands 
of other slaughter-houses in the various cities 
and villages throughout the country, we can 
perhaps form at least some idea of the vast 
proportions of this traffic in blood. And 
when we take into consideration that in this 
one concern over 18,000 people were em- 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 45 

ployed, we can also form some slight con- 
ception of the large number of men, women, 
and children throughout the country who are 
brought under the influences which we have 
been considering. 

And then, by a strange coincidence, though 
the connection is natural, I turned a page or 
two and my eye fell upon the advertisement, 
also a full-page advertisement, of a large 
brewing concern. The advertisement in part 
ran as follows : — 

**When 219 carloads of Beer were 

shipped to Manila the world wondered. What 
industry was this that shipped its product 
by a mile and a half of trains to that re- 
mote spot? 

"Yet that enterprise has been repeated a 
hundred times over. Wherever civilisation 

has gone Beer has followed. Agencies 

have for twenty years been established in 
many of the farthest parts of the earth. 

" Beer has been known in South 

Africa since the white man went there. It is 
shipped in large quantities to the frigid wilds 
of Siberia. It is advertised in the quaint 
newspapers of China and Japan. It is the 
beer of India, the beverage of the Egyptian 
and the Turk. 



46 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

" It is too little to say that the sun never 

sets on ■ agencies, for it is literally 

true that it is always noonday at one of 
them." 

Marvellous indeed is the enterprise of the 
great nation, so magnificently equipped for 
carrying, among other things, a flesh and 
blood, a whisky and beer civilisation, which 
we complacently denominate by the term 
Christian, to the remotest parts of the earth 
and to the benighted peoples who stand 
so in need of these " civilising " influences ; 
peoples, moreover, who are so obtuse and 
so " stubborn " in the face of their bene- 
volent Anglo-Saxon well-wishers, that many 
times these civilising influences can enter 
only after the blood of numbers of their 
bravest, most highly educated and patriotic 
sons has been spilled, through the agency 
of rifles, bayonets, and Catling guns. 

Sport and War 

It does not require any great amount of 
mental power to be able to trace the direct 
connection between a spirit of kindness and 
consideration and care for the animal world 
and a kindred spirit of kindness, care, and 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 47 

consideration for all of the human kind, 
as also between this and a tendency to settle 
differences of opinion, or disputes, by the 
thoroughly wise and economical method of 
conciliation and arbitration in distinction 
from the thoroughly unwise, expensive, and 
degrading method of swagger and bravado, 
which leads so often to a resort to force 
in the form of individual, or corporate, or 
national murder. 

There is a direct connection between 
"pig-sticking" and man-bayoneting. There 
is a direct connection between the foremost 
representatives of a great nation, and a large 
class that ape and follow them, in shooting 
hundreds of pheasants or partridges in a 
single day, and a spirit of reckless bravado 
that easily leads the nation into war with 
another nation when complications arise, or 
when, through the agency of superior force, 
it can gain its ends in appropriating to itself 
the wealth of the goldfields or the territory 
of a smaller or weaker people. 

There is a direct connection between an 
Emperor's proclivity for killing that leads 
him and his party ruthlessly and flippantly to 
shoot two or three thousand pheasants in a 
single day and to pride themselves upon the 



48 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

achievement, and words such as were recently 
addressed to a portion of the army at the 
head of which he temporarily is, enjoining 
them, above all things, to go out with revenge 
as their watchword, on account of certain 
indignities shown to a few citizens of that 
country in the far East recently. The spec- 
tacle of one who prides himself upon being 
the head of a Christian nation, counselling 
and arousing and fostering a spirit of re- 
venge is indeed anomalous. But the step 
is not a long one from blood-spilling in 
the animal world to the same in connec- 
tion with human beings, and to a spirit of 
hatred and revenge which shows that most 
essential elements of a true Christian char- 
acter are wanting. 

There is a direct connection between the 
unwise, expensive, and thoroughly unstates- 
manlike method of dealing with the recent 
differences in South Africa, and the Royal 
Buckhounds which to-day ornament — no, not 
ornament, but disgrace — the Queen's Court. 
The time is coming when the practice of 
tame deer hunting will be as much looked 
down upon, and condemned as brutal and 
unworthy English gentlemen, as the bull- 
and bear- baiting that prevailed so univer- 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 49 

sally in Elizabeth's day are at the present 
time. 

The time is coming when in England, in 
Germany, in America, in every nation, the 
people will find that there is a higher duty 
than that of following the leadership of 
men miscalled statesmen, because lacking in 
that spirit of honest, frank consideration and 
conciliation, through lack of which disputes 
are allowed to come to a settlement by force 
of arms, the consequent burden being 
thrown upon the people to bear. The time 
is coming when we shall find that this is not 
patriotism, but that patriotism is that ready 
service which works for the people's highest 
welfare, and that the people's highest wel- 
fare is served most by keeping their country, 
among other things, out of expensive and 
demoralising bloody warfare, rather than by 
getting it into war. It was the President of 
the American Humane Education Society 
who most truthfully said : " Unnecessary 
wars are simply wholesale murder, and the 
men who cause them [however high their 
positions] are the greatest and worst of 
criminals." 

It is the same spirit of killing and "pig- 
sticking," and looking upon the animal 

D 



50 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

world simply as something to use for our 
own pleasure or gain, without any con- 
sideration of their rights, and without any 
impulse to care for and treat them kindly, 
that fosters that thoroughly insane imperial- 
istic tendency that has gained such footing 
in England of late, endangering the very 
existence of the empire, and demanding the 
enormous price to be paid that is being 
demanded to-day. The same imperialistic 
tendency in America has lately brought 
the nation dangerously near to the parting 
of the ways, one of which leads to the 
continual upbuilding of a republic, the 
pride of all time, the other to its gradual 
undermining, by transforming it into an 
empire — if not in name, in reality — and 
thus sending it, through the violation of 
great elemental laws^ to the same ends 
that all nations that have adopted a similar 
course have or must inevitably come to.* 
It is this spirit, a tendency to which has 
been witnessed in America but recently, 
which will gradually blunt, and in time 
entirely kill, the quick, noble, and God-like 
expression of sympathy for a people strug- 
gling for freedom and liberty. The destiny 

♦There is a world-wide difference between territorial and 
national expansion in accordance with just and righteous laws 
and an aggressive and in time sell-destructive imperialism. 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 51 

and power of the American nation depends 
upon the fostering of the spirit of kindli- 
ness, love of fair play, and desire for con- 
ciliation, and hence of peace, in distinction 
from the spirit of militarism which great 
corporate interests and corporate politicians 
would have dominant in the country. 

When the interests of the people are 
zealously guarded and righteously cared for, 
then when an emergency arises and there 
is a call to arms for defensive purposes, 
the only possible justification of any resort 
to arms, the nation will find that it has 
a citizen soldiery as vast as the numbers 
of its male population, and far more effective 
in the long run, than any hired body of 
soldiery can possibly ever be. And instead 
of supporting a vast army of men who are 
producing nothing, contributing nothing to 
the nation's welfare, but living upon the 
labour of others, and waiting merely for 
orders to shoot, mangle, and do to death 
men, fellow-men of another nation, each 
will be working for himself and for all, and 
will be enjoying the fruits of his labour. 
It is to humane education that we must look 
to save us from the monstrous system of 
militarism which at present prevails in the 
larger share of European countries. 



52 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

In passing through Germany not long 
since, I was particularly impressed with see- 
ing in fields here and there large companies 
of soldiers drilling and manoeuvring, while 
in the fields on all sides of them, were num- 
bers chiefly of women and children, and 
oxen and horses hard at work. This con- 
dition prevails to a great extent over the 
greater part of Germany. It is so, to a 
greater or less degree, in the other Euro- 
pean nations where the military system has 
grown to such enormous proportions. 

To seek neither the gold fields nor the 
territory of other peoples, to live in peace 
with all nations so far as in us lies, to be 
willing in all cases to give justice, as we are 
quick to demand it, to believe thoroughly 
that there are no questions or complica- 
tions arising that cannot be settled by con- 
ciliation and arbitration if there is the ear- 
nest sincere desire to do so, and to have 
in public office men who are imbued with 
this idea, refusing admittance to those who 
are not wise enough to be guided by this 
principle, but in whom the spirit of swag- 
ger, brow-beating, and bravado prevails — in 
these, among other things, lies the hope, 
the healthfulness, the great and growing 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 53 

power, the future grandeur of the American 
nation. It is in this way that she can pre- 
serve and maintain and continually increase 
her unique position among the nations of 
the earth. 

This reign of peace is indeed the con- 
dition that all people who are humanely 
inclined, all people who are lovers of 
animals, should work to bring about, and 
thus to save the many thousands of horses 
and mules and oxen the inhuman treat- 
ment and the terrific suffering to which 
they are always subjected when a war is 
in progress. The treatment that thousands 
of animals have been subjected to both 
on transport and on train, and on the field 
in South Africa during the past few months, 
is a burning disgrace to the British nation. 
Brutalities have been engaged in and con- 
doned, that would not be countenanced for 
an instant by the government of this or 
any other nation at all civilised, in ordinary 
circumstances. The very nature of the con- 
ditions, of course, makes it hard for the 
noble and willing animals to be carefully 
attended to and mercifully treated. And 
this is greatly accentuated by the fact that 
every diabolical agency is let loose which 



54 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

increases the spirit that actuates the ill- 
treatment and the most awful abuses on 
the part of those who have the animals 
in charge. But this very fact makes it 
all the more imperative for those who value 
humane education, to work all the more 
zealously and unceasingly for its universal 
advancement, so that conditions of this 
kind may be prevented, and the causes 
of a terrible amount of suffering to hosts 
of noble animals may be done away with. 

The time is coming when practically all, 
with Cowper, will say and feel: 

" I would not enter on my list of friends, 
Though graced with polished manners and 

fine sense, 
Yet wanting in sensibility, the man 
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

This is our ultimate destiny, though we 
have been coming up the steep most 
tardily. 

Personally, I would rather be the author, 
and have the rare unfoldment of heart and 
sympathy of the author, of the following 
little stanzas, than be the greatest military 
leader in the world to-day; — 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 55 

" Across the narrow beach we flit, 

One little sandpiper and I ; 
And fast I gather, bit by bit, 

The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. 
The wild waves reach their hands for it. 

The wild wind raves, the tide runs high. 
As up and down the beach we flit, — , 

One little sandpiper and I. 

I watch him as he skims along, 

Uttering his faint and mournful cry ; 
He starts not at my fitful song, 

Or flash of fluttering drapery ; 
He has no thought of any wrong. 

He scans me with a fearless eye, — 
Staunch friends are we, well-tried and strong, 

The little sandpiper and I. 

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night. 

When the loosed storm breaks furiously ? 
My driftwood fire will burn so bright ! 

To what warm shelter canst thou fly ? 
I do not fear for thee though wroth 

The tempest rushes through the sky ; 
For are we not God's children both, 

Thou, little sandpiper, and I." 

Instead of the spirit of destruction and 
the desire to gain something for ourselves, 
to kill something, to tear something from 
its life, even at the expense of breaking up 



56 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

that wonderful harmony which reigns in 
God's world, we need the spirit which 
animated Emerson when he wrote the 
lines entitled " Forbearance " : 

"Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? 
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk ? 
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse ? 
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? 
And loved so well a high behaviour. 
In man or maid, that thou from speech re- 
frained. 
Nobility more nobly to repay ? 
O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine ! " 

Treatment of Criminals 

In the degree that moral, heart, humane 
training finds its place among us as a people, 
in that degree shall we come nearer a wise 
and humane method of treatment, so far as 
the more unfortunate ones among us, whom 
we denominate by the term "criminal," is 
concerned. It is a well-known fact that we 
have not as yet found the true method of 
dealing with these our fellow-beings. Our 
methods deal too much with punishment, 
and not enough with unfoldment, and there- 
by prevention. Our methods in the long 
run tend to make criminals, and to per- 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 57 

petuate criminals, rather than to prevent 
them or to transform them into law-abiding 
and honourable citizens. When a man 
makes a mistake that any of us might have 
made, and that possibly under like condi- 
tions many of us would have made, the 
spirit of punishment for the sake of punish- 
ment, even to the extent of revenge, so 
holds us as a people that we truly share 
in the wrong-doing of the one whom we 
condemn and injure, when by another, 
a more sane, a more thoughtful, a more 
kindly and common - sense method, we 
would be instrumental in bringing about 
a set of conditions which, instead of per- 
petuating the man as a criminal, would 
make him an honour and a blessing to the 
community in which he lives. 

Likewise, when through misfortune or 
broken health, an inability to find work, 
and many times in a starving condition, 
a man or a woman is compelled to find 
entrance to the workhouses in England, 
in many at least he is treated more as a 
beast, or as an inanimate object, than as 
a human being. He who enters these must, 
as a rule, leave all hopes for love and kindly 
and sympathetic treatment behind. And 



58 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

this, indeed, is the reason why so many 
deliberately take their own lives rather than 
enter them. And yet it is England who 
prides herself upon being the world's 
greatest Empire — a great Christian nation 
whose mission it is, even with shot and 
shell her leaders will tell you, to carry the 
blessings of a Christian civilisation to the 
inferior peoples of the world. 

When we once begin to understand that 
ignorance is at the bottom of all wrong- 
doing, of all sin and error and crime, with 
their attendant sufferings and losses, then 
we shall begin to realise that sympathy 
and compassion — and, consequently, kindly 
treatment — instead of punishment and 
revenge, is necessary if we would truly aid 
one who has stumbled. The systems in 
vogue to-day will make and will perpetuate 
criminals ; they will not transform a wrong- 
doer into a strong, sympathetic, and honest 
man or woman. They may make him or 
her a greater danger to society, but they 
will never make him or her an aid to the 
community, or an aid in bringing about 
a higher state of life and civilisation in 
the community, as practically every one of 
such can be made. In the work of the 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 59 

George Junior Republic, in New York 
State, we have an evidence of what can 
be accomplished when work is begun from 
the right side. And if boys can be reached 
so effectively by these methods, certainly 
men and women can be also. 

During a single year recently a hundred 
and sixty thousand cases in round numbers 
were committed to prison in England and 
Wales. Of this number over sixty-one 
thousand — considerably more than a third — 
were committed for a week or less. Now, 
under a wise and more enlightened system 
of penal law, most of these cases need not, 
and should not, have come to prison at 
all. In the matter of imprisonment it is 
so often that it is the first step, the first 
commitment, which counts and which even- 
tually evolves a criminal future. Of these 
sixty-one thousand cases and over, a very 
large number were first offenders, and many 
were imprisoned for but three or four days. 
How often it has been said by one whose 
life has been one of the criminal cast, "If 
I hadn't got that three or four days (or 
that week) when a boy, how different my 
whole life would have been." If, therefore, 
we would prevent having a criminal class 



6o EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

we must do everything in our power to 
prevent unnecessary additions to it, and 
especially should we refrain from actually 
driving early and slight offenders into its 
ranks. 

And then the meaningless, unnecessary, 
and deplorable degradations that so often 
accompany the treatment of prisoners are 
worthy of the most unreserved condemna- 
tion. There is enough degradation, God 
knows, accompanying the entrance to prison 
life in itself without any studied additions 
to it. When, through studied efforts, or 
the blind and brainless following of bad 
precedent on the part of prison ofBcials, 
it is made next to impossible for one in 
prison to receive frank and open-hearted 
kindness, and when thereby it is made 
impossible for him spontaneously to give 
kindness, then no more successful steps in 
the process of perpetuating him as a 
criminal, could be taken. Instead of wise, 
Christ-like steps to awaken, to feed, and 
to foster this greatest of heart qualities, 
hand-in-hand with self-respect, from the 
very first, crushing blows are given for 
its total destruction. Little wonder is it, 
then, that so often the offender comes 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 6i 

out of prison with that deep and sullen 
hatred of all established order, that makes 
him more dangerous to himself and to 
society at large than ever before. 

Any system of penal law and prison discip- 
line or treatment that does not give a man 
or a woman back to the world better than 
when he or she entered the prison gates, is 
one greatly to be deplored. Here and there, 
however, there are brave and able men and 
women, strong, sweet, and with great love in 
their natures, who are giving themselves to 
this work, and who are quietly and gradually 
leading us into a better day. And as better 
social and more equal industrial conditions 
for the great mass of the people come about, 
and as a more vital, humane, heart-training 
for all classes, from the so-called highest to 
the so-called lowest, takes its place amongst 
us, then this great and constant problem 
will be already to a great extent solved. 

We need more sympathy in all of our 
relations in every-day life, individual and 
national, and any methods of punishment 
that have in them the elements of resent- 
ment and revenge, in distinction from being 
restraining, educational, and uplifting are 
thoroughly anti-Christian, to say nothing of 



62 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

their being unwise, inexpedient, and expen- 
sive. Who shall accuse and who shall con- 
demn ? Certainly no wise man or woman ; 
and certainly the unfortunate ones among us 
should not be in the hands of those who are 
the unwise. The time was, not so very long 
ago, when the insane were treated much as 
our criminals are treated to-day, treated as 
if they were to blame. A wiser spirit, how- 
ever, prevails in regard to this unfortunate 
class among us, and insanity is now looked 
upon as a form of mental disease, not as 
a wilful perversion of one's natural self. 

The wiser among us, who have given 
time and attention to the study of the 
criminal classes and the best methods of 
aiding them, are recognising that there 
is such a thing as moral disease, just as 
we have come into the realisation of the 
fact that there is such a thing as mental 
disease, and when those whom we call 
criminals are treated in accordance with 
these facts, then we shall begin to witness 
a great change for the better in our present 
methods. 

Sympathy must be brought about so far 
as our relations with one another and so far 
as our relations with the animal world are 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 63 

concerned. Every living creature must be 
looked upon, respected, and treated as a 
living creature and not as a mere thing, not 
as something that is merely to serve our 
own purposes, with no right of any claims 
upon us in return. 

Do you know the story of " The Caged 
Thrush " ? A stanza comes to my mind : 

" Alas for the bird who was born to sing ! 
They have made him a cage ; they have 

clipped his wing ; 
They have shut him up in a dingy street, 
And they praise his singing and call it sweet ; 
But his heart and his song are saddened and 

filled 
With the woods and the nest he never will 

build. 
And the wild young dawn coming into the 

tree, 
And the mate that never his mate will be ; 
And day by day, when his notes are heard, 
They freshen the street, but — alas for the 

bird ! " 

The Golden Rule must be applied in our 
relations with the animal world just as it 
must be applied in our relations with our 
fellow-men, and no one can be a Christian 
man or w^oman, or even truly deserve the 



64 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

name of man or woman, until this finds em- 
bodiment in his or her life. Even worms are 
our helpers, and it would be absolutely impos- 
sible, so far as the right conditions in the 
ground are concerned, to get along without 
them. We are their debtors to a vast extent, 
and were it not for the birds, practically 
all vegetable and plant life would in time, 
as we have found, be destroyed, and we 
would be helpless even so far as our very 
existence is concerned. When we study the 
habits of animals in a truly sympathetic 
way and become thoroughly acquainted with 
them and with the work that each one is 
performing, we shall see that each one has 
its place in the economy of God's world, that 
each has its part to play, and that even so 
far as the animal world is concerned we are 
all related and inter-related. If we destroy 
or permit to be destroyed that marvellous 
balance which the Divine Power has insti- 
tuted in the Universe, we do it at our own 
peril. Instead, then, of being the enemies of 
the animal world, instead of being its perse- 
cutors and its destroyers, we should be its 
friends and helpers. 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 65 



HoMi« yoR Animals 

Much among us is done for man, little 
as yet for the animal. There are among us 
almost innumerable hospitals and homes for 
men and women, but there is very little of this 
nature as yet for the animals. As yet, there 
is a Home or a Rescue League for animals 
only here and there. We need them more 
abundantly. We need Homes and Rescue 
Leagues and Clinics and Hospitals for them 
as we need them for ourselves ; and where 
there is one Animal Home to-day, there will 
be, I am sure, scores, or even hundreds, in 
time to come. 

In far-off Bombay is probably the largest 
and most elaborate hospital for animals in 
the world. It has both its in-patients and 
its out-patients, and it ministers to animals 
of all kinds as carefully as human beings 
are administered to in the hospitals of the 
West. Over 2000 animals are taken into 
the hospital each year, and well on to 1000 
are treated as out-patients. In all there are 
some forty buildings, large and small, con- 
nected with the hospital, and the architec- 
tural structure and the appointments of some 



66 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

of them are indeed superior to those of many 
of our regular hospitals. 

This splendid hospital for animals was 
founded by a native Indian, a Parsee mer- 
chant, Sir Dinshaw Manockjee Petit. It is 
called Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital 
for Animals, and receives its support from 
large numbers of citizens of Bombay who are 
interested in its' beneficent work. 

Not only domestic animals of every kind 
are treated and cared for in it, but the ani- 
mals of the jungle and the wild birds which 
are found wounded or suffering from any 
cause, are taken to it and nursed back to 
health and then set free again. 

The hospital is the pride of Bombay, and 
the Hindus are very liberal in their con- 
tributions to it. When endowing the 
laboratory Sir Dinshaw made the express 
stipulation that no vivisection should be 
practised in it, "for the reason that the 
same would wound the feelings of Hindus, 
from whom material support is obtained 
for the hospital, and if they come to know 
of it they will at once discontinue their 
support, and the hospital will thereby suffer 
in this respect." This is the frank and 
child-like reason given by Sir Dinshaw in 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 67 

one of the sections of the document by 
which he created the trust for the laboratory. 

In addition to this splendid Hospital 
for Animals, there is in Bombay an in- 
fluential Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals. There is also the 
Pinjrapole, a place where worn-out or dis- 
eased animals are sent to be cared for 
until they are restored to health or until 
they die. Near Calcutta there is also a 
similar institution, established some thirteen 
years ago by a society of influential Hindus. 
It is near the Sodepur Station, some ten 
miles from the city, and is under the con- 
trol of a manager with a staff of some 
eighty helpers and experienced veterinary 
surgeons. 

In many cities in India institutions similar 
to those above described are to be found. 
Says a writer in the London Telegraph in 
describing this home for animals in Cal- 
cutta : 

" It is true that the mysterious lower world 
of animal life is regarded in India with more 
reverence and kindliness than among Christian 
peoples. The one great fact of abstinence 
from flesh food produces an extraordinary effect 
among Hindoo communities. A newly-arrived 



68 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

European walking in Baroda, or Nassick, or 
any such Brahmanic capital, would mark with 
wonder how the lower creatures have under- 
stood and acted upon this tacit compact of 
peace. In the densest portions of the towns 
the monkeys sit and chatter on the roof ridges, 
the striped squirrels race up and down the 
shop poles, the green parrots fly screaming 
about the streets, the doves perch and coo and 
nest everywhere, the flying foxes hang over the 
most frequented wells and tanks, the mon- 
goose scurries in and out of the garden gates, 
the kites and crows frequent the market-places, 
jungle doves and birds of all sorts forage boldly 
for food, and at night even the jackals steal 
impudently down into the suburbs. There is 
a great fixed peace between man and his in- 
feriors in the scale of creation, and the effect 
of this, to any lover of nature, is certainly 
charming." 

Here let me quote a few sentences from 
a Hindu writer and teacher, personally 
known to and honoured by many in America 
and in England : 

"When Hindu boys and girls go to school 
and read their first lessons, they learn the 
highest humanitarian principles, and as they 
grow older they are kind toward all living 
creatures. They are taught : ' Be kind to 
lower animals. Do not kill them for your food, 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 69 

because the natural food of man is not an 
animal.' I learned in the first book of Sanskrit : 
*When enough of nourishment can easily be 
obtained from that which grows spontaneously 
on the earth, who will commit such a great 
sin as to kill animals for filling his stomach 
and deriving a little pleasure of taste ? * 

" Each one of these animals possesses a soul, 
has individuahty and the sense of * I,' can 
feel pleasure and pain, has fear of death and 
struggles to live. The germ of life in each 
one of these will gradually pass through the 
various stages of evolution, and ultimately 
appear in a human form. Therefore, the 
religion, philosophy, and Scriptures of the 
Hindus teach that as life is dear to us, so is 
it dear to the' lower animals ; as we do not 
wish to be killed, so they too shrink from 
death. *Do not kill any animal for pleasure, 
see harmony in nature, and lend a helping 
hand to all living creatures,' say the Hindu 
Scriptures. 

" Whenever we kill any animal for our food 
or pleasure we are selfish. It is on account 
of extreme selfishness that we do not recognise 
the rights of other animals, and that we try 
to nourish, nay, even to amuse ourselves, by 
killing innocent creatures or by injuring them, 
or by depriving them of their rights. This 
kind of selfishness is the mother of all evil 
thoughts and wicked deeds. That which makes 



70 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

us selfish and helps us to cling to our lower 
self is degrading and wicked ; that which leads 
us towards unselfishness is elevating and virtu- 
ous. That which prevents us from realising 
the oneness of Spirit is wrong ; that which 
opens our spiritual eyes and helps us to see 
that Divinity is expressing itself through the 
forms of lower animals, and makes us love 
them as we love our own Self, is godly and 
divine." 

In the light of all the foregoing facts we 
can see that we have much to learn in our 
relations with the animal world from the 
Hindu people. They have grasped far more 
fully than we the great fact of- the universe — 
namely, the essential unity, the essential one- 
ness of Life. When we have fully grasped 
this great fact, and when we live fully in 
accordance with it, then our civilisation will 
become a symmetrical civilisation, it will 
become all-round and complete, and not 
the one-sided and at times questionable 
civilisation it is at present. It will then 
be a blessing to all nations, to all the 
peoples of the earth, and not as it is 
so often to-day in some respects, a verit- 
able curse and cause of degradation to 
them, for it will revolutionise in many 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 71 

respects our relations and our dealings 
with them. It will also serve to make 
perpetual that which, if we are not care- 
ful, may be merely transitory, just as it 
has proved in the cases of many appar- 
ently strong and powerful nations before 
us. Let us follow the injunction of one 
of the speakers at a meeting of the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 
in a city of what some term a heathen 
country, when, in urging an increase of 
the Society's membership to at least 50,000, 
he called upon the people to "write mercy 
in the woods where the wild deer runs, 
and in the air where our birds fly, and 
all along the paths where our children and 
our youths pass to and fro." 

Our Humane Education Societies, our 
societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, as well as our few cHnics and 
hospitals and homes for animals, are re- 
ceiving support from the best types of men 
and women, but they need a still greater 
and a far more universal support than 
they are at present receiving. Interest 
along this line is growing, however, and I 
think the time is rapidly coming when 
men and women of means, in making be- 



72 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

quests for the founding or the maintaining 
of institutions, will think of making them 
for the animal world as readily as they 
now think of making them for the human 
world. And still more, the wiser, the 
kindlier, and the more far-seeing among 
us, will give liberally to the support of 
every institution, every movement that has 
for its work humane, heart - training, so 
that there will be less need for last resorts, 
so that in coming time prevention will 
take the place of distress and suffering. 
It is simply a stirring of thought that is 
needed. Practically all cases of cruelty 
and ill-usage, and all careless treatment, 
arise through thoughtlessness, or have at 
least their beginnings in thoughtlessness. 

We must learn to sympathise with the 
animals about us. We must realise that 
they love life just as we love it, that 
they suffer just as we suffer, that they 
are hurt by harshness and threats as we 
are hurt by them, that they are influenced 
by our thoughts as we are influenced by 
the thoughts of one another, that they love 
kindly treatment and that they appreciate it 
as we do ourselves, that they love and form 
attachments just as we do. 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 73 

The Enduring Soul 

It would be exceedingly interesting and 
valuable were there place in a little volume 
of this nature to relate numbers of incidents 
and stories in connection with the lives of 
various animals — incidents and stories show- 
ing their devotion to those to whom they have 
become attached and whom they love, their 
intelligence, their powers of memory, their 
discernment and reason. Many is the time 
that an animal, perhaps the dog especially, 
has thrown itself into danger to warn from 
danger or to save the life of a human 
being, owner, friend, or stranger, without 
any apparent thought of its own safety or 
life. It was but a few weeks ago that I 
noticed among the news items on the 
editorial page ot my daily paper, that on 
a Swiss eminence a monument is to be 
erected to Bary, that splendid St Bernard 
dog who during his life saved the lives of 
some forty persons. 

And there are other monuments that I 
know of, erected to commemorate the 
fidelity or the sacrificial service of animals. 
But how many thousands of monuments, 
bathed at times with grateful tears and 



74 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

hallowed by loving memories, have taken 
form in the minds and hearts of those into 
whose lives various animals have come. 
And when we look into its eyes and see 
the soul of the animal look out upon us, 
with all its love and its fear, its warmth of 
feeling, its confidence, wherever possible, 
as well as its strange questionings, is it 
possible for us longer to remain among that 
company who feel that there is a great gulf 
fixed, eternally fixed, between man and the 
animal, many of whom live far more con- 
sistent and honest lives than we at times 
live ourselves. Personally I believe that 
their endeavour to live true to their various 
natures and to their highest, even if at 
times they fall short of it as we do, is 
something that will be just as enduring 
in their lives as in ours, and that they are 
destined to a continually higher life, the 
same as each and every one of us. The 
common Father of us all, of the animal 
as of ourselves, caused no one of His 
creatures to be brought into existence 
in vain, or for a mere temporary time. 
Where there is a soul, be it in animal or 
in human form, it is destined to endure as 
such, even though the form, the body with 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 75 

which it IS clothed upon, and through which 
it manifests on any particular plane of exist- 
ence, changes, and in time falls away, to 
give place to a new type of body better 
adapted to the environment into which it 
goes. 

In order to be as concrete as possible, 
we have been considering concrete cases 
of carelessness and abuse and torture to 
the animal world from our hands. But I 
think we have seen sufficiently clearly 
already that whenever and every time we 
sin against or do violence to these, our 
fellow-creatures, we ourselves, in some form 
or another, reap of the kind that we sow. 
This is inevitably and invariably true, and 
there is no escape from it. And so, instead 
of being their arch-enemy, let the children, 
above all, be taught to become friends to, 
and to care for and protect, these, their 
fellow-creatures. 

Let them be taught to give them always 
kind words, and kind thoughts as well. 
Some animals are most sensitively organised. 
They feel and are influenced by our 
thoughts and our emotions far more gener- 
ally than we realise, and in some cases even 



76 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

more than many people are. And why 
should we not recognise and speak to the 
horse as we pass him in the same way as 
we do to a fellow human being? While 
he may not get our exact words, he never- 
theless gets and is influenced by the nature 
of the thought that is behind, and that is the 
spirit of the words. Let them be taught to 
become friends in this way. Let them be 
taught, even though young, to raise the 
hand against all misuse, abuse, and cruelty. 
Let them be taught that the horse, for 
example, when tired, or when its load is 
heavy, needs encouragement just as a 
man or a woman needs it, and that the 
whip is not necessary, except, indeed, in 
cases where he has not been taught to 
respond to words, but only to the whip. 
The whip is now used ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred where it is not only 
unnecessary, but entirely uncalled for. 

An American traveller, when riding one 
day with Tolstoi, noticed that he never 
made use of a whip when driving, and 
remarked to him to that effect. " No," 
he replied, with a slight spirit of disdain, 
" I talk to my horses. I do not beat them." 
Let us be taught by and let us carry to 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 77 

the children the example of this Christ- 
like man. 



Heart-Training 

Were I an educator, I would endea- 
vour to make my influence along the 
lines of humane, heart-training my chief 
service to my pupils. The rules and 
principles and even facts that are taught 
them will, nine-tenths of them at least, 
by-and-by be forgotten, but by bringing 
into their lives this higher influence, at 
once the root and the flower of all that 
is worthy of the name ** education," I would 
give them something that would place them 
at once in the ranks of the noblest of the 
race. I would give not only special atten- 
tion and time to this humane education, 
but I would introduce it into and cause it 
to permeate all of my work. A teacher 
with a little insight will be able to find 
opportunities on every hand. 

M. de Sailly, an eminent French teacher, 
who for a number of years has been giving 
systematic humane instruction in his school, 
says : 

"I have long been convinced that kind« 



78 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

ness to animals produces great results, and 
that it is not only a powerful cause of material 
prosperity, but also the beginning of moral 
prosperity. My manner of teaching it does 
not disturb the routine of the school. Two 
days in the week all our lessons are conducted 
with reference to this subject. In the read- 
ing class I choose a book upon animals, and 
always give useful instruction and advice. 
My copies for writing are facts in natural 
history, and ideas of justice and kindness to 
animals. I prove that by not overworking 
them, and by keeping them in clean and 
roomy stables, feeding them well, and treat- 
ing them kindly and gently, a greater profit 
and larger crops may be obtained. I also 
speak of birds and certain small animals 
which are very useful to farmers. 

"The results are exceedingly satisfac- 
tory. The children are less disorderly, and 
more gentle and affectionate to each other. 
They feel more and more kindly to the 
animals and have ceased to rob nests and kill 
birds. They are touched by the suffering of 
animals, and the pain they feel when they see 
them cruelly used moves others to pity and 
compassion." 

Mr George T. Angell, President of the 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 79 

American Humane Education Society, has 
said : 

"Standing before you as the advocate of 
the lower races, I declare what I believe 
cannot be gainsaid, — that just so soon and 
so far as we pour into all our schools the 
songs, the poems, and literature of mercy 
towards these lower creatures, just so soon 
and so far shall we reach the roots, not only 
of cruelty, but of crime. . . . 

"A thousand cases of cruelty can be pre- 
vented by kind words and humane education 
for every one that can be prevented by 
prosecution." 

And let us hear another sentence or two 
from another educator, a superintendent of 
schools in one of our New England States, 
— a sentence or two from an appeal to his 
fellows in connection with humane educa- 
tion : 

"Fellow-teachers, let us make our teaching 
stronger and richer. Let us give our pupils 
something varied and inviting. Let us 
reach out more. Let us reach out for and 
take in humane education. Too much so- 
called teaching is unskilled labour. Too 
many of us are buried in our text-books^^ 
arc mechanical hearers of lessons, are 



So EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

mere word-jugglers, fact-pedlers, and mlnd- 
stuffers. Let us put away all these things 
and i^eack. Let us put brains and heart 
into our work. Let us become character- 
builders. Such work will compel people to 
realise the grandly important truth that 
teaching is the profoundest science, the 
highest art, the noblest profession." 

Then, were I a mother, I would infuse this 
same humane influence into all phases of the 
child's life and growth. Quietly and indirectly 
I would make all things speak to him in this 
language. I would put into his hands books 
such as "Black Beauty," "Beautiful Joe," 
and others of a kindred nature. I would 
form in my own village or part of the 
city, were there not one there already, a 
Band of Mercy, into which my own and 
neighbours' children would be called ; and 
thus I would open up another little fountain 
of humanity for the healing of our troubled 
times. 

We have recently been at war with another 
nation. There is to-day much unrest and 
uncertainty in connection with our foreign 
relations and policies. These matters, vital 
as they are, are of but small import compared 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 8i 

with the questions and the conflict in con- 
nection with the social situation within our 
own borders that we shall be compelled 
squarely to face within the coming few years ; 
the beginning of this time is indeed already 
at our very doors. The state of affairs re- 
ferred to, as also its rapidly increasing pro- 
portions, is sufficiently well-known to all to 
make it unnecessary for more to be said in 
regard to it. Many who will have a hand in 
the solution and adjustment of these matters 
are now in our schools and on our streets, 
and we are educating them. We can educate 
them to patience, kindness, equity, and 
reason, or to hot - headedness, rashness, 
cruelty, and anarchy. And if these ques- 
tions are not adjusted peaceably and through 
fhe influence of the former qualities, then 
they will be precipitated, through conflict 
and a terrific destruction of life and property, 
at the hands of those of the latter quahties. 
We have now such agencies as will, in the 
hands of a small body of hot-headed, heartless 
men, burn half a city in a single night. 
Though one is a wealthy parent, his son may 
be the poor man and the anarchist. Though 
another parent is poor, his son may be the 
millionaire, and one of such a type as to be 

F 



82 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

hated by the great toiling classes. Time has 
a strange method of changing conditions. 
Both need to be humanely educated, the one 
equally with the other ; and upon how thor- 
oughly they are so educated will depend the 
orderly adjustment and peaceable solution of 
this rapidly coming time. 

One of the most beautiful and valuable 
features of the kindergarten education, 
which comes nearer the true education 
than any we have yet seen, is the constantly 
recurring lesson of love, sympathy, kindness, 
and care for the animal world. All fellow- 
ships thus fostered, and the humane senti- 
ments thus inculcated, will return to soften 
and enrich the child's, and later the man^s 
or the woman's life, a thousand or a million 
fold ; for we must always bear in mind 
that every kindness shown, every service 
done, to either a fellow human being or a 
so-called dumb fellow-creature, does us more 
good than the one for whom or that for 
which we do it. The joy that comes from 
this open-hearted fellowship with all living 
creatures is something too precious and 
valuable to be given up when once experi- 
enced. To feel and to r .li»se the essential 
oneness of all life is a steep, up which 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 83 

the world is now rapidly coming. Through 
it ethics is being broadened and deepened, 
and even religion is being enriched and 
vitalised. Many, in all parts of the world, 
whose thoughts and sympathies have reached 
this higher plane, are giving abundantly of 
their time to push forward this much-belated 
humane element in human life. Others are 
giving abundantly of their treasure, through 
which many thousands of humane publica- 
tions are being circulated, homes for animals 
are being established, humane education is 
being fostered, and the work of the various 
humane organisations is being enlarged in 
its scope and possibilities. 

The strongest and noblest types of men 
and women are never devoid of this tender, 
humane sympathy, which is ever quick to 
manifest itself in kindness and care for every 
living creature. There is a little incident 
in the life of Lincoln which I found a few 
days ago in a most valuable little book 
recently published, entitled "Songs of 
Happy Life " : 

" In the early pioneer days, when he 
was a practising attorney and 'rode the 
circuit,* as was he custom at that time, 
he made one of a party of horsemen, lawyers 



84 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 

like himself, who were on their way one 
spring morning from one court town to 
another. Their course lay across the 
prairies and through the timber; and as 
they passed by a little grove where the 
birds were singing merrily, they noticed a 
little fledgling which had fallen from the 
nest and was fluttering by the roadside. 
After they had ridden a short distance, 
Mr Lincoln stopped and, wheeling his 
horse, said, 'Wait for me a moment. I 
will soon rejoin you ' ; and as the party 
halted and watched him they saw Mr 
Lincoln return to the place where the little 
bird lay helpless on the ground, saw him 
tenderly take it up and set it carefully on 
a limb near the nest. When he joined his 
companions one of them laughingly said, 
' Why, Lincoln, what did you bother your- 
self and delay us for, with such a trifle 
as that?' The reply deserves to be re- 
membered, and it is for this that I have 
told the story. *My friend,' said Mr 
Lincoln, *I can only say this, that I feel 
better for it.'" 

Let us go from this to one other incident 
in his life. During that famous series of 
public debates in Illinois with Stephen A. 



EVERY LIVING CREATURE 85 

Douglas in 1858, Mr Douglas at one place 
said, " I care not whether slavery in the 
Territories be voted up or whether it be 
voted down, it makes not a particle of differ- 
ence with me." Mr Lincoln, speaking from 
the fulness of his great sympathetic heart, 
replied with emotion : "I am sorry to per- 
ceive that my friend Judge Douglas is so 
constituted that he does not feel the lash 
the least bit when it is laid upon another 
man's back." 

Such are the strong, the valiant, the royal 
men and women, those with this tender 
soul-pathos, loving, caring, feeling for, 
sympathising with, both their fellow human 
beings and their so-called dumb fellow- 
creatures ; recognising that we are all parts 
of the one great whole, all different forms 
of the manifestation of the Spirit of Infinite ^ 
Life, Love, and Power that is back of all, 
working in and through all, — the life of all. 



"The Life Books." 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 

Its purpose is distinctly practical. It is most fas- 
cinating^ly written, and deserves the remarkable suc- 
cess it has achieved. — The Review of Reviews, 

The volume abounds in passag^es of great beauty 
and strength; but the striking feature of the book 
is, after all, the solid, sensible, healthy exposition of 
the one theme it is written to enforce. — New York 
Independent, 

This is a book among a thousand for its inspiring 
message, and is eminently worthy of a vast audience. 
You will miss much if you miss reading its truth- 
laden pages. — Cumberland Presbyterian, 

In Tune With the Infinite. 

It is one of the simplest, clearest works ever writ- 
ten, dealing ^vith the power of the interior forces in 
moulding the every-day conditions of life. — San 
Francisco Bulletin, 

... It immediately suggests the works of Drum- 
mond, but sho^vs a decided advance upon the ground 
which he made familiar to mankind; it not only re- 
veals the author's recognition of spiritual law, but in 
certain instances shows his rare and remarkable un- 
derstanding of the nature and action of such law; 
the preface alone shows his high intuition, and the 
book proves his ability to achieve his purpose in a 
marvellous degree. — Boston Daily Evening Tran- 
script, 

Mr. Trine can write well upon such topics as this. 
He is alive, vigorous, cheery, confident. The work 
has distinctiveness in its style and method. — The 
Literary Worlds London. 



The above books are beautifully and durably bound 

in gray-green raised clothe stamped in deep 

old-green and gold ^ with gilt top. 

Pricey $7.25 per volume. 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL &. CO.. 

NEW YORK. 



By RALPH WALDO TRINE. 

The " Life " Booklets. 

The Greatest Thing Ever Known. 

The moment we fully and vitally realize -who and 
what z'je are we then begin to build our own world 
even as God builds His. — From Title-page. 

... It unfolds the secret of our underlying* 
strength, and shows what it is that gives us power 
to fullil the real and living purooses of our being. 
— The New Christianity, 

Every Living Creature. 

The tender and humane passion in the human 
heart is too precious a quality to allow it to be 
hardened or effaced by practices such as we so often 
indulge in. — From Title-page, 

An eloquent appeal and an able argument for 
justice and mercy to our dumb fellow-creatures. A 
good book for those whose characters are being 
formed, and for all w^ho love justice and right. — 
Religio-Philosophical Journal, 

Character-Building Thought Power. 

A thought, good or evil, an act, in time a habit, 
so runs life's law; what you live in your thought- 
world, that, sooner or later, you will find objectified 
in your life. — From Title-page, 

In ** Character-Building Thought Power" Mr. 
Trine demonstrates the power of mental habits, 
and shows how by daily effort we may train our- 
selves into right ways of thinking and acting. His 
teachings are sound, practical, and of priceless 
worth. — Albany Press, 



Bound in an exceedingly attractive and handy 
form. Price, SS cents per volume. 



THOMAS Y, CROWELL II CO., 
NEW YORK. ' 



p. L. 117 



xlC^, 



■'LEASAEf 




THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 






^ia. 



Ail losses or injuries beyond reasonable wear, hov/- 
ever caused, must be promptly adjusted by the person 
to whom the book is charged. 

Fine for over detention, two cents a day (Sundays 
and holidays excluded). 



leg 1929 9—1330 



M 





1 

ii. 





